In the arsenal of weapons
available to the medieval church none was thought to be more
powerful than the penalty of excommunication. By its imposition a
person was cut off not only from Eucharistic Communion but also
from the communion of the faithful. It was viewed as a sort of
excision by the church of a malignant member, and in the practical
order it was intended to restore that member to health by social
ostracism.

Yet even in the face of an
excommunication a person could contumaciously refuse to seek
reconciliation. At this point the force of the secular arm could be
requested by the church. In England there existed from at least the
beginning of the thirteenth century until the end of the sixteenth
a routine procedure whereby English bishops could invoke the
secular arm against such recalcitrant excommunicates. After an
excommunicate had spent at least forty days in his penalty without
making any effective effort for reconciliation, the local bishop
could send to the royal chancery a request (called a
signification) for his arrest; as a matter of course, a writ
for his capture (calles a Significavit) was issued to the
local sheriff.

For the period from 1200 to the
Reformation, about 7,600 significations relating to almost
17,000 excommunicates survive. These records are without parallel
in western Europe, just as, it would appear, the highly formalized
and institutionalized English procedure against excommunicates was
itself without parallel.